Pledges

While most of Rock's financial tools are designed to be multi-purpose, the concept of pledges is closely tied to the nonprofit world of donations. Pledges allow your members and guests to commit to an amount that they will be giving over a stated period of time.

Pledges predict the level of donations you can expect in a given timeframe. Some organizations use them to plan for their yearly budgets. Others use them to track what has been committed to a specific building or capital campaign. Either way, Rock can help you easily track these commitments.

Manage Pledges

Pledges are frequently given via paper commitment cards. When this occurs, someone within the organization will need to hand-enter the pledges into the system. This can be done under Finance > Pledges. From this screen you'll see a list of all pledges currently in the system. You can use the grid filters to help limit which pledges are shown.

To see the 'Total Results' of pledges, edit the block settings and toggle Show Account Summary to 'Yes'

From this pledge list page, you can update or add new pledges. The figure below shows this screen with the various options available.

• Person - This is the person who is making the pledge. For families you'll want to pick the head of house. As with many of Rock's financial tools, pledges can be viewed from a family perspective when linked to any adult in the family.
• Account - The account that the pledge is for. Often times this will be a unique account for a capital campaign or building fund.
• Total Amount - This is the dollar amount that will be given over the duration of the pledge.
• Date Range - This defines the duration of the pledge.
• Payment Schedule - This determines how often gifts (financial transactions) will be given to meet the pledge amount.
• Pledge History - The Pledge History tracks any changes made to a person's pledge, including adjustments to the pledge amount, donation frequency, and time frame, along with details on who made each change and when. This provides transparency and accountability, ensuring that any updates are clearly documented. It also helps administrators manage donor relationships and resolve discrepancies efficiently.

Pledges Self-Entry

When possible, it's a great idea for members to enter their own pledges online. This not only allows you to reduce the amount of data entry, it also allows them to create a recurring giving profile to match their pledge. The sample external website that comes with Rock already has a pledge entry screen configured for you to use. You can find this page under Give > Pledge.

This pledge block on the external site has several block settings to make it very flexible for you to use.

• Enable Smart Names - This feature will attempt to find a matching person record in Rock to link the pledge to. This match will occur if a record exists with an exact match on first name, last name and email address. There’s also some logic built in to handle cases when someone types in Ted and Cindy or Ted & Cindy in the first name field. When this happens only the value Ted will be used in the search. If an exact match does not occur a new person record will be created with the record status of pending, for future review by an Admin.
• Account - If you provide a specific account as a block setting, the guest won’t have to pick one, and their pledge will automatically be assigned to this account.
• New Connection Status - In the case where a new person record must be created this will be the connection status that will be assigned to the record.
• Record Source - Discover where a new individual's info was entered into the system. In this case it will be labeled as 'Pledge'.
• Pledge Date Range - This setting allows you to assign a date range for the pledge. If you provide both a start and end date, these values will be pre-populated behind the scenes, so the guest will not have to worry about entering them. In the Obsidian version of this block, if you provide an end date only, then when the person fills out the form that end date will be pre-populated for them and the start date will automatically be set to today's date.
• Show Pledge Frequency - Determines if thePledge Frequencyfield should be displayed. You may not want your guest to have to provide this information.
• Require Pledge Frequency - There may be times when you would like to show the pledge frequency but not require someone to enter one. In other cases, you might want to require this item. With this setting you can have it any way you'd like.
• Save Button Text - This setting allows you to customize the text of theSavebutton.
• Note Message - The block allows you to provide a note to your guests to help explain the pledge in more detail.
• Receipt Text - This is the message that will be displayed to your guest upon saving. This is a great place to celebrate their commitment. It comes out of the box configured to link them to set up a recurring donation to match the frequency they selected. If one was not selected, it will allow them to pick one. This field supports Lava, so you can personalize it.
• Confirmation Email Template - You can also select to send a template confirmation email after the save. This email template can use the same liquid merge objects from the Receipt Text field.
• Select Group Type - When you choose a group type here, the person will see a list of groups to which they belong that are of this type. The pledge will be associated with the group the person selects.
• Pledge Term - This will change the word "Pledge" in "Total Pledge Amount" to whatever term you provide. For instance, you might use "Donation" as your Pledge Term, which means the person would see "Total Donation Amount" on the self-service pledge screen.
• Phone Types - If you're using the Obsidian version of this block, you can select which phone types to make available for the person to provide. The phone number field(s) will only show if the person is not logged in.
• Required Phone Types - If you have any Phone Types selected from the setting above, here you can choose which of those phone types are required. This is only available in the Obsidian version of the block.

Once a person enters their pledge on-line you can still view and manage it using the same pages as described in the Managing Pledges section above.

Pledge Frequency

In several of the screens above, we mention picking pledge frequencies for determining how often someone will be giving towards their pledge. Rock comes pre-configured with several frequency values, but you can add to or edit them under Admin Tools > Settings > Defined Types > Recurring Transaction Frequency.

Pledge Analytics

Being able to track the status of pledges and report on pledge progress is critical for most capital campaigns. The pledge analytics block (Finance > Pledge Analytics) helps to answer these questions. Let's see what it's capable of.

1. Account - The account(s) that you would like to report on. This will filter both the pledges and giving.
2. Date Range - The date range that will be used to filter pledges. Any pledge that is active during any part of the date range will be used. All gifts in the account selected above will be included in the report regardless of date.
3. Pledge Amount - Limits the pledges that are shown based on the amount of the pledge.
4. Percent Complete - Limits the returned results based on the percentage that has been given towards the pledge.
5. Amount Given - Limits the returned results based on how much the person has given.
6. Show - Determines what should be shown in the result grid.
   1. Only those with pledges: Only people where a pledge exists will be shown.
   2. Only those with gifts: Will show anyone with a gift during the date range even if they don't have a pledge.
   3. Those with gifts or pledges: If you have either a gift OR a pledge, we're going to show you.
7. Result Grid - After clicking the Update button, the results are shown here.